Financial Privacy & Security News

WASHINGTON, June 24 – Speaking at a packed hearing of the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday, the U.S. Public Interest Group endorsed the administration’s proposal for a federal Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) “to protect consumers from unfair credit, payment and debt management products.”

“The CFPA is a big idea – it’s a game-changer,” U.S. PIRG Consumer Program Director Ed Mierzwinski said after speaking to the committee.

“The opponents of the CFPA are the same bankers and regulators who presided over the collapse of the economic system due to a lack of consumer protection. That’s why it’s a game-changer. It helps clean up Wall Street and put the consumer first,” Mierzwinski added.

“It’s no exaggeration to say that this is the biggest thing for financial consumers since deposit insurance in the 1930s,” he said.

Mierzwinski was one of several representatives of organizations who together recently founded the Americans for Financial Reform coalition of nearly 200 state and local organizations ranging from financial experts to community groups who are all working to reform the financial system and rebuild our economy.

Joint testimony submitted by Mierzwinski and the Consumer Federation of America’s Travis Plunkett can be found here.

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U.S. PIRG, federation of state Public Interest Research Groups, is a  non-profit, non-partisan public interest advocacy organization. For more information visit http://www.uspirg.org.
For more on U.S. PIRG’s Reining in Wall Street program, click here.